Australia’s biggest oil and gas producer Woodside edged up 0.1 per cent after making its final investment decision on a $17.5 billion ($27.4 billion) liquefied natural gas export project in the US, cementing its position as a top supplier of the fuel. The approval clears large-scale construction of the Louisiana LNG export plant, which is targeting its first shipment in 2029, Woodside said.
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Smaller rival Santos gained 0.7 per cent. Coal producers Whitehaven Coal and Yancoal gained 3.9 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively.
Endeavour shares rose 0.5 per cent. The retailer and hotel owner, which runs the bottle shop chains Dan Murphy’s and BWS, said this morning that former Virgin chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka will become its new boss from January 1, with executive chairman Ari Mervis continuing in his role until then.
On Wall Street overnight, stocks drifted to a mixed finish on Monday, ahead of potential flashpoints later this week that could bring more sharp swings for financial markets. The S&P 500 inched up by 0.1 per cent to extend its winning streak to a fifth day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.3 per cent, while the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1 per cent.
The relative lull in trading offered a respite from the sharp, historic swings that have rocked markets for weeks, as hopes rose and fell that President Donald Trump may back down on his trade war. Many investors believe Trump’s tariffs could cause a recession if left unaltered. Coming into Monday, the S&P 500 had roughly halved its drop that had taken it nearly 20 per cent below its record set earlier this year.
Yet with a jittery April near its close, several market pros see little reason to think volatility is in the rearview mirror. For sharemarkets to keep rising, investors would need to see Donald Trump’s White House follow through on the “dovish pivot” toward trade with China, according to Chris Larkin at E*Trade from Morgan Stanley.
Mixed trading for some influential tech stocks ahead of their earnings reports this week pulled the S&P 500 back and forth between modest gains and losses for much of the session overnight.
Amazon fell 0.7 per cent, Microsoft dipped 0.2 per cent, Meta Platforms added 0.4 per cent and Apple rose 0.4 per cent. All are set to report their latest result this week, and they’re some of Wall Street’s most influential companies because they’ve grown to become some of the biggest in terms of size, by far. That gives their movements extra weight on the S&P 500 and other indexes.
Outside of big tech, executives from Caterpillar, ExxonMobil and McDonald’s may also offer clues this week about how they’re seeing economic conditions play out. Several companies across industries have already slashed their estimates for upcoming profit or pulled their forecasts entirely because of uncertainty about what will happen with Trump’s tariffs.
A fear is that Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs may be pushing households and businesses to alter their spending and freeze plans for long-term investment because of how quickly conditions can change, seemingly by the hour.
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So far, economic reports have mostly seemed to show the US economy is still growing, though at a weaker pace. On Wednesday, economists expect a report to say US economic growth slowed to a 0.8 per cent annual rate in the first three months of this year, down from a 2.4 per cent pace at the end of last year.
But most reports Wall Street has received so far have focused on data from before Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2, when he announced tariffs that could affect imports from countries worldwide. That could raise the stakes for upcoming reports on the US job market, including Friday’s, which will show how many workers employers hired during all of April. Economists expect it to show a slowdown in hiring to 125,000 from 228,000 in March.
In the bond market, Treasury yields fell some more. They’ve largely been sinking since an unsettling, unusual spurt of higher yields earlier this month rattled both Wall Street and the US government. That rise had suggested investors worldwide may have been losing faith in the US bond market’s reputation as a safe place to park cash.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.21 per cent from 4.29 per cent late on Friday.
With AP, Bloomberg
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